TintiTypes

2011 Christmas Letter

Dear Friends and Family:

T'is the season . . . again

And again, this year the Fates of Weird made their annual stop-over at the Nill/Apple homestead. Last year’s visitation was a Zeus zap of lightening. This year’s visit was more subtle yet had the potential of causing catastrophic consequences. When we got home after running errands for a couple of hours one extremely hot July afternoon, in need of a soothing, cold glass of water, Chuck went to get some ice from the fridge’s dispenser. Nothing happened. That is, no ice came out of the dispenser. So, he opened the freezer door to see if there was a cube stuck in the dispenser preventing the ice from coming out. When he opened the freezer door the whole front of the ice dispenser fell out and the odor of burnt refrigerator innards wafted out along with it. The dispenser mechanism and the whole ice bin around it was charred. Weirdly, the ice in the dispenser was still in ice form and not melted water. However, it was completely covered by a layer of black, toxic-looking, oily goo.

After a few seconds of stunned incredulity, the reset button to our brain’s cognitive functions kicked in and we sprang into action. We emptied, as fast as we could, the whole of the freezer and refrigerator’s ruined contents into garbage bags to get them out of the house and also to reduce the appliance’s weight so we could force it out of its tight-fitting home between the kitchen cabinet and the wall to yank the plug before some other part of the possessed thing decided to spontaneously burst in flames. All of this, while inhaling the malodorous and certainly toxic fumes from the burnt plastic, or fiberglass, or whatever in hades the thing was made of. I’m sure we probably reduced our life expectancy by a decade because of all the poisonous crap that we inhaled during this maneuver. On the bright side, the thing that saved the fire from spreading was that the burning ice-maker motor ran out of oxygen in the air-tight refrigerator interior and extinguished itself. Otherwise, I’m sure we would have come home to, well, maybe no home.

 

Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.
~C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971

Like I’m sure so many of us do, I have a love/hate relationship with technology. Among the many modern technological doohickeys and amenities I love, the list would have to include the availability of information on the internet, the convenience of on-line shopping, the versatility of word processing, e-mail, instant messaging, hands-free calling from my car and my GPS path finder... well, then again, let me rephrase that because my GPS doesn’t really like paths, but I do. It eternally wants to get me to my destination via expressway even when the more scenic and direct route might be a back road or two-lane highway.

I only turn the thing on when I don’t know where my final destination is, which usually only involves the last couple of miles of the journey. For example, to find a specific place in East Lansing, which is a favorite destination of ours. We like going there to enjoy an outing at Eastwood Mall for a must stop at the Schuler’s Book Store or to dine at a couple of our favorite restaurants. East Lansing, for those of you who are not from Michigan, is about an hour drive from my house. All things being equal, I prefer to take Old Lansing Road, a scenic two-lane country road, which was there long before the expressway was ever built, and which runs parallel to the freeway a few miles to the south of it. Coming home, usually after dark, the expressway is safer than maneuvering the curvy, pitch black, country, deer infested road. But in daylight it is a lovely and relaxing drive through farms and tree-lined foresty areas. The thing is, that like I mentioned before, if our final destination is somewhere we are unfamiliar with, I punch in the address of where we are going into the GPS. The result of this is that, Geepers (my nickname for the GPS) goes berserk the whole way there. At every major intersection along the way, in her stubborn mission to guide me to the freeway, Geepers warns me to turn right. It’s now become a game that we have timed to the millisecond to say in unison with the computerized female voice “recalculating” as we continue straight on our scenic road ignoring the advice from the nagging mechanical device.

I almost feel guilty and it’s often crossed my mind that I hope she never does a “Hal” on me (for those of you too young to know what I’m talking about, Hal is the computer that goes insane in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”). I imagine her voice getting more and more agitated and annoyed with every “recalculating,” until eventually she starts to scream “RECALCULATING! WHAT PART OF TURN RIGHT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND! ARE YOU RETARDED? WHEN I SAY TURN RIGHT, TURN RIGHT, DAMN IT! . . .” or words to that effect. Hmmmmm, if it ever does do that I’m throwing Geepers out the car window. Just saying.

 

Technology to the Rescue

In one of her comedy routines Rita Rudner comments that you know you’re in love when you meet that “certain someone you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” She isn’t wrong. In every relationship there are things that annoys, frustrates, infuriates or just irritates the other person. I don’t care how much you may love and cherish your partner. It is a given. Nothing wrong with it, it’s just the way things are. The trick of it is to embrace it and poke fun at it when you can and just enjoy and accept your differences. One of the things that I do that makes Chuck crazy is the catastrophically messy condition a previously pristine newspaper is left in after I have had my way with it. I don’t see what the problem is. Yes, it is left with folds in odd places, some parts are upside down, others are inside out, but it is basically still intact, if you define intact as being all there . . . somewhere?

Before we got our Nooks last year we used to get the paper version of the Sunday, New York Times. I usually got hold of it first and my sweetie would go apoplectic at the sight of the paper’s painfully distressed state when it was his turn to read it. Patiently, he would pick up the confussed mess of newsprint and proceed to organize it and refold it to it’s original condition before trying to read it. When he had finished reading it the paper always looked as pristine as if it had just come out of the newstand. It is a mystery to me how he does it, or for that matter, why he does it. I find the page size of American newspapers awkward. It is too big to read without folding it, difficult to turn the pages, impossible to fold them in any cohesive manner or to manage it in any user-friendly way. In short, it is a sort of news warfare that I engage in whenever I read the thing. Technology, however, has come to my rescue. I now subscribe to the electronic version of the NY Times. For the price of only the printed Sunday version, we now have it daily, and guess what? I get to read it wherever I am and there are no remains at the end of the day. I’ll have to ask Chuck if he misses the Sunday paper restoration ritual. Who knows, maybe he does.

 

Cart . . . astrophy

Another idiocyncracy that makes my sweetie scratch his head also involves a mess. It is interesting when you think about it. I am fastidiously neat when it comes to most everything, hosekeeping, bookeeping, and having a place for everything and everything in its place. But the chink in my armour, so to speak, are three things: the first I’ve just covered, newspapers; the second, is the tupperware cupboard – I’m not allowed to go there because I just shove with disastrous results; and the third is, according to Chuck, the way I “throw” (his words, not mine) things into a grocery cart. On the occassions when we are together at a grocery store he rearranges the cart every time I stop to put another item into the thing. Funny that three of the things that make him nuts have to do with messiness. But the chaos that is his desk and workspace are perfectly normal and acceptable to him. Just goes to show you, we all have our quirks. It’s what makes us who we are, and that’s alright.

 

2012 – The End is Nigh?

According to the Maya Calendar the world is supposed to end on December 21, 2012. Can’t remember if that is supposed to be Eastern Standard Time or Greenwich Mean Time. Either way. The theory is that there is supposed to be some sort of stellar alignment that will make the earth’s axis tilt and there goes baby, cradle and all. My theory is a little different. I think it is linked to the whole incandescent light bulb phase-out and the horrid mercury-laden fluorescent replacement ones that are supposed to be gradually phased-in starting next year. One of two things related to this event will bring about the annihilation of the human race: we will either all die of mercury poisoning from the damned things, or we will all gradually break our necks because the ghastly new light bulbs take half an hour to actually light up. It’s only a theory, but I think I’m on to something here. You decide.

I wish you all a bright and Happy Holiday and a healthy and grand New Year.

Affectionately,
Cynthia

When Computers Malfunction: The Arg Factor

I am not a computer whiz.  I am pretty versed on navigating and using word processing programs and Microsoft Office.  But when it comes to the computer’s guts and what makes the darned things work, well, there we are getting into a whole new story, and this is where the arg factor of the whole computer thing comes into play.

My troubleshooting computer malfunctions and glitches ability has a very limited repertoire of options.  In fact, it pretty much consists of unplugging and re-plugging devises, and/or shutting down and restarting my computer.  Beyond that I am powerless and clueless.  Please note that I am not the exception to the rule when it comes to computer know-how, but that rather, I am pretty much the rule.  I however, unlike the majority of people who may find themselves in this dilemma, am a very fortunate person because I have a friend who is a computer genius, and when I or my sweetie run into real problems that can’t be solved by an e-mail or phone-guided troubleshooting step-by-step “now do this, and then do this” coaching conversation with this computer genius, he is unbelievably sweet enough to make a house call and help us – a busman’s holiday for him because that is what he does for a living all day at work

So, I have to ask myself, what does the average person who doesn’t have a computer genius for a friend do?  Throw the damned thing out the window? hope that it will get better on its own? or take the computer into a store and hope there is someone who can help them?  I imagine that whatever the answer to that question is, there must, by default, be a lot of cursing involved.

So, I ask myself, why can’t they, or why don’t they make a computer that doesn’t decide to stop functioning properly at random.  Oh yes, it isn’t that the user does anything that causes the malfunction.  I have had countless occasions when I have been happily working along doing something that I have done dozens or hundreds of times before, but for whatever inexplicable reason that particular time it causes my computer to give me a message that goes something like: “YOU HAVE COMMITTED A FATAL ERROR AND NOW THE COMPUTER NEEDS TO SHUT THE PROGRAM DOWN.  WHATEVER WORK IN PROGRESS YOU HAVE BEEN SLAVING OVER FOR THE PAST TWO HOURS IS IRRETRIEVABLY LOST.  YOU ARE SCREWED AND UNLESS YOU ARE A COMPUTER GENIUS YOU MIGHT AS WELL RESIGN YOURSELF TO THE FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM – EVER.” Ok, perhaps the wording is a bit different, but for all intent and purposes I am not really stretching the point.  This is a terrifying and totally underserved thing to be confronted with on your own computer screen.  I mean, through no fault of your own your computer arbitrarily decides to go on strike and make your life a living hell for an indefinite future.

How do the people that make computers and computer programs get away with this?  How and why do they make a product that is prone to melting down at random?  and why do we, the user, put up with this  and continue to encourage them to sell a product that is obviously still in the experimental stage?  Why do we tolerate and not rebel at the obscure language and gobbledygook that is the computer lingo.  I mean we go along with things like going to the “start” icon or button or whatever it is called, as the go-to place to turn our computer off.  For the love of god! what would be so wrong with calling it the “OFF” button.

The thing is, computers are really still such a mystery to us all that we simply accept that this is the state of affairs.  We, the consumer, pay them (the computer and software manufacturers) to be used as guinea pigs in the experiment in progress that is the modern day computer.  We make the assumption that if a computer malfunctions and we don’t know how to fix the malfunction, that it is not the fault of the company that built the computer or the software that screwed up by making the darned thing impossible to figure out by mere mortals in the first place.  We simply put up with this insane state of affairs and meekly go along with it and blame ourselves for not being more computer savvy.  

What we should really be asking is why they don’t make computers easier for the average computer user to figure out and why they don’t use language in their manuals that is actually understandable.  I mean really… have you ever gone to a manual or to the help button on your computer and tried to figure out what the hell they are talking about?  I mean, really! whenever I’ve tried to look in one of these sources I realize that I don’t even know what the heck the question is.  Let’s be real here, you have to actually know what the problem is before you can ask the question of how to fix the problem, and if you knew what the problem was in the first place you probably wouldn’t have to be asking the question.

SURE SIGNS THAT SPRING IS ON ITS WAY IN MICHIGAN

The robins are back.  But since the ground is still frozen they have to scrounge around for food because they would get beak bleeds if they tried to “dig” for worms.  Therefore, they eat stuff like leftover berries on ornamental fruit trees which have fermented over the winter.  The result of this is that we have a lot of intoxicated robins, which fly in erratic patterns and instead of singing their usual birdie songs they sort of produce a hickupy warble as they fly into walls and windows.

Another sign of spring is that pretty much like clockwork, on the first of March the skunks come out of hibernation.  You know this by the number of skunk carcasses littering the roads.  They are groggy after their hibernation and slower moving than normal.  Plus, not being the brightest of critters they have forgotten the whole “cars on roads” thing and therefore there are a larger number than usual of their dead bodies littering the road and perfuming the air.

Teenagers start wearing shorts and tee-shirts when it hits 40 degrees.  I’m talking teenagers here, so don’t assume heavy brainpower at work or functioning internal temperature gauges.  Teenagers are powered by hormones and what they think is the “cool” thing to do.  Apparently freezing parts of their anatomy is a small price to pay if it means an increase in their perceived coolness factor.  Don’t ask me to understand or explain it.  My mind can’t go there.  I am only reporting what I see.

Grass is again visible after being buried for three straight months.  Well, I call it grass.  It is actually this weird gray and brown stuff that has patches of straw-colored crap that is called winter mold and that apparently, according to my lawn service, I am supposed to rake out of it.  Like I don’t have a life and nothing better to do with my time.

Dry cleaners are busy with the whole Michigan population taking their winter coats to get cleaned before storing them away for the warm weather months.  Of course, we usually get a surprise blizzard sometime in late April and have to drag the darned things out again.  This ritual is a sign that we Michiganders are either slow learners or the eternal optimists.  I’m going with the optimist version.

We all get colds or sinus infections.  The reason for this is simple.  Our bodies have no clue what to do with going from temperatures ranging from 70 to 30 to 40 to 60 to 20 to 15 to 65 degrees – all in the course of one week, and sometimes in one day. When you start out the day in a coat and end up in short sleeves by afternoon and then back to a coat by evening, your immune system sort of goes on strike and says: “Ok, what’s the deal here.  There is just so much I can deal with, so I’m going on strike and you lose.

But don’t get me wrong.  Us Michiganders love our state and we are a strange and hardy lot.  We may grouse about the weather and all the good and bad things that go along with it, and by March we are all sick and tired of the cold and the snow and we look forward to feeling the sun on our faces and not having to pack on five layers of clothing just to walk to our mailboxes.  But if truth be told, we love the change of seasons.  In spring we look forward to warm breezes and sunny days, but by October we are tired of mowing the lawn and the hot weather and feel revitalized when we start getting that chill in the air, and we actually look forward to sweater-weather and the thought cooking a hot batch of chili or a slow cooking roast in the oven. 

Staging a Garage Sale -- A Necessary Evil

A few weekends ago we had a garage sale.  I swore the last time I had one of those that I would never have another one again as long as I lived.  And so, after a week’s worth of sorting and organizing and pricing and carting and setting-up, here I am again, making the same promissory statement:  I hereby promise to myself never to willingly put myself in a position whereby I find it necessary to have a garage sale to get rid of accumulated junk that needs disposing of by any and all possible means.

Let me explain, I am not a pack-rat by nature.  However, the same cannot be said for my sweetie, who, if unchecked will accumulate stuff and pile it, pretty much anywhere and everywhere – not a habit I find endearing.  So, this garage sale was an act of desperation, a means to an end – the end being to get rid of all the crap that Chuck has been hording for some years now.  The end result of this desperate act is that now the storage room is organized and there is actually room to store the things we need, use and want, and all the unneeded, unwanted and never-to-be-used in a thousand years items are gone – huzzah, alleluia, hurrah, yippy, bravo, well done that, fantastic, and tidings of joy.

The traffic flow through our garage was a constant for the two days of the sale because we were but one of the participants in a mega, two-subdivision garage sale event.  Which meant that people who take the garage sale thing seriously were out in droves going from garage to garage looking for . . . well, for whatever it is that garage sale bargain hunters look for.

The fun part of the sale was visiting with many of our neighbors who stopped by, mainly, to chat and see how we were weathering the flow of humanity.  And what a flow it was.  The types of people that showed up to stalk the merchandise was, indeed, a sampling of humanity -- crabby people, polite people, biker types, whinny and annoying people, rude people, cordial people, fat types, skinny types, people with well behaved children, and then there was the child from hell.  The particular couple with the hell-boy looked like they had the combined brain power of an amoeba, and their devil-spawned offspring inherited his parents’ lack of intelligence or common sense.  This kid, who was around eight years of age, attempted to climb a ladder leaning against the garage wall, sit on a rocking chair with no bottom, crawl under the table, and attempt any and all types of antics that anyone, including a normal eight year old, would have known were actions detrimental to life and limb.  The parents of this demon child were too stupid to notice or care.  I, on the other hand, did not hesitate to yell at the annoying urchin to stop doing whatever idiotic antic he was attempting – liability insurance might not cover death or dismemberment due to stupidity.  Although these people were on my property for probably only five minutes, those five minutes were definitely reason enough never to want to have another garage sale for as long as I draw breath.

One of the phenomenon that I find fascinating are the total strangers who will tell you their life history or will share intimate details about themselves that you would definitely prefer they kept to themselves.  I’m talking people you’ve never seen before and will (the fates willing) never see again.  It is mystifying to me why anyone would confide that much information to a stranger without any prompting or encouragement.  But there were several people who fell into that category.  It is a weird predicament in which to find yourself.  On the one hand you are hostage to the situation -- you can’t walk away because you are running the garage sale.  So you’re stuck listening to someone’s life-story without an escape option.  Your only recourse is to make somewhat appropriate noises from time to time throughout the stranger’s monologue, but not too many because you don’t really want to encourage this person to continue with their narrative.  So you grunt from time to time and hope that someone with a question will interrupt and save you from the flow of unwanted information streaming your way.

The star of the event, however, was my clematis, which has now climbed half way across the ached trellis which stands on the path leading from the driveway to the back patio and was in glorious, breath-taking full bloom.  I lost count of the number of people who, when they caught sight of it as they approached the garage, would stop dead in their tracks and just stand there admiring it and commenting on how it was the most beautiful clematis they had ever seen.  Many people asked if they could walk up to admire it up-close.  It truly is a thing of beauty.  But like most things in nature, its blooming life is short, in this case, about two weeks.  But it is, indeed, an event to enjoy when it graces us with its short-lived radiance.

And so, like the clematis blooms, my garage sale is now a memory.  In the case of the clematis, a good one, the garage sale . . . well, let’s just say that it served a very necessary and useful purpose.  But man-oh-man, it sure entailed a lot of effort and time.

Getting Old Sucks

Don’t believe a word of anything you’ve ever heard about the benefits or joys of aging. They are all nothing but platitudes and clichés at best, and in truth, outright lies and deceptions. The thing is, no one, and I do really, really mean, no one, either likes the idea of getting older or is enjoying the heck out of the whole getting older thing. Let’s face it, what is there to like about it? Oh, I know the whole, what are the alternatives thing? yeah, yeah, blah, blah. I get it, and I agree that being dead sucks a heck of a lot more that growing old.

Fine, so now that we’ve gotten that whole old B.S. argument out of the way let’s get down to reality, and reality is that I have never met anyone who is dancing for joy at the thought of aging. Why, I ask you would anyone like the idea of seeing your body doing things you never imagined in your worst dreams that it would do. It’s a total betrayal of all the care and attention you may have given it throughout your life. And I don’t care how much you’ve exercised, how well you’ve fed it, clothed it, moisturized it and pampered it. It is inevitable that eventually parts of it spread, sag, stiffen up, hurt, fall, widen, sprout unwanted hair, lose unwanted muscle tone, lose elasticity, and misbehave in a million other ways that you never saw coming.

When I look at pictures of myself in my 20’s and 30’s and look at myself now I wonder what the hell happened? What’s sad is that it creeps up on you. You don’t see the difference from one day to the next, or even from one week or month to the next. Yet one day you wake up and look in the mirror and you know that you are not the same person that looked in that same mirror, in really, what doesn’t seem all that long ago. Yet the mirror doesn’t lie. You are looking older. What used to be high cheek bones are now still high cheek bones, but the skin is no longer adhering to those bones. Instead, it has decided to migrate to the lower part of your face and become jowls, you know, those little pouches of flesh on either side of your chin, which by the way, is not as defined as it used to be either. And the same southern migration has happened to your eyelids, which are now threatening to fall over your eyes even when they are wide open. And the skin under “them eyes” isn’t staying put where it should either.

 The same effects of gravity that are ravaging your face are taking their toll on all the other parts of your anatomy. And let me emphasize that the result of all that gravitational pull isn’t doing much to improve either your figure or your outlook on the future of that figure. And what’s with all the unwanted hair that sprouts from the weirdest places. And why does it do that? Just this week my sweetie had a piece of Kleenex attached to the side of his ear. When I asked him about this oddity he said he had cut himself.

“How?” I asked, “could you cut your ear?

“I was trimming the hairs growing out of my ear,” was his response. “It’s what happens when you get older, hair grows out of your ears.”

I must say, that is just plain wrong. Men have the double whammy of having to deal with the sad reality of thinning hairlines, and adding insult to injury, having to deal with their lost locks migrating from the top of their heads into strange territory, like the inside of their ears, nose and heaven only knows where else.

The other day a good friend of mine and I were talking about the whole aging thing and she said that she didn’t think that she could run anymore. She said she hadn’t tried it in a long time, but that she was sure that even if she had to run for any reason that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it. It got me thinking about it and while walking the track at the gym the other day I decided that I would try and see if I could do it. I took a few fast strides and then decided to reconsider the whole attempt to run since I don’t think that there is a sports-bra made that would be strong enough to protect me if I really tried to seriously give it a go. It saddened me because I remember a time when I could sprint with the best of them and get up to a pretty good speed in a short amount of time without having to consider whether parts of my body would sway out of control or go in opposing directions to the intended one.

And then there are the visits to the doctor. Those are really terribly depressing. Whenever you complain about something hurting you can be sure that the doctor’s explanation for whatever ails you will be prefaced with the words “well, you know, as we get older……” That’s when you know you are doomed. From this point on in your life those words will always be the explanation for the deterioration happening to whatever part of your anatomy that happens to be under discussion. And I don’t care if it is your digestive tract, a sore joint, moles sprouting, veins popping or calcium deposits shaking loose in your inner ear. It is all age related and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it from happening. It is going to happen. Why? Because you are getting old.

And then there are your conversations with friends. Notice how those change with age? As you get older whenever you get together with friends the conversation eventually and inevitably gravitates to the topic of which part or parts of your body are misbehaving and to what tortuous and humiliating medical procedure or test you will be shortly subjected to for the purpose of finding out why or what the problem is with said body part.

No, the whole myth of “getting better with age” only applies to wine, single malt and some cheeses. It most definitely does not apply to humans. Age is only fun from birth until somewhere in our mid-thirties. After that the fun part is over and the slide toward annoying and really annoying begins. I doubt there is a person out there who is truthfully not frightened of what getting older will do to them. I don’t think you can be sane and not be afraid of aging. It sucks. Some of us will age more gracefully and in better condition and health than others. But the bottom line is that we are all getting older by the minute.

So, with that comforting thought I will end this with the poem “Crabbed Age and Youth,” sometimes attributed to the Bard but officially anonymous, which perhaps tells it best:

Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport,
Age’s breath is short;
Youth is nimble, Age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and Age is tame.
Age, I do abhor thee;
Youth, I do adore thee;
O, my Love, my Love is young!
Age, I do defy thee:
 O, sweet shepherd, hie thee!
For methinks thou stay’st too long.

? by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from The Passionate Pilgrim, XII.

Cooking for Friends and Family – What’s for Dinner?

Inviting friends and family to dinner has become a complicated endeavor. In the past, having someone over for dinner was a simple matter: you set a date and time, you decided on a menu based on what sounded yummy to you, you cooked it, you served it, the people ate it, they enjoyed it, they thanked you, and a good time was had by all. But all that is now in the past. Cooking for friends and family in today’s world has become a complex and almost scary affair, a tangled jungle of factors to fight through with a figurative machete, to try and determine what one can serve one’s guests.

If you don’t believe me, consider the following list of issues that the modern host faces: the diet fad of the day, ideological fads, lactose intolerance, food snobs, allergies, picky eaters, meat and potatoes only eaters. I have sometimes been known to exaggerate to make a point, but trust me when I say, that this time I am, if anything, understating the matter. Ok, let me elaborate a little to illustrate my point. Let’s take some of the items on the list, starting with fad dieters.

TO CARB OR NOT TO CARB

Let me start by saying that I am not making this up, these are actual people I know. It is never safe to assume I know which diet fad they are into at any given time, it just depends on what book or article they read last. One day they are into the whole counting carbs thing, so that if, say the main course were to be a pizza, that day they will only eat the fat-laden pizza toppings and leave the carb-infested crunchy crust resting on the plate like a forlorn food Frisbee. Then, the next time that same pizza offering would find them scraping off the tasty toppings and consuming the previously offensive carby crust, since now they are eating only carbs and shunning any and all food that might contain even a hint of fat.

IDEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING . . . NO GREEN EGGS AND HAM

And here we get into a whole mine field of food no no’s that, at least I would previously have never even imagined existed. The list here includes vegetarians, vegans, and raw food only adherents. The practitioners of these food ideologies came to these extremes for different reasons: some of them for health-related benefit beliefs; some for animal rights advocacy; some because they have a latent eeek factor, which they developed at age five and continue to cultivate into adulthood. The reasons are many, but the outcome the same: cook beware, chicken broth, honey, egg noodles as well as other every day staples like milk, bread and cheese are considered evil. In one case an acquaintance became a vegetarian because she saw a documentary about a meat packing plant. Not sure how she thought cows became steaks before seeing this documentary, but from that day on, cows were off the menu – leather shoes and leather seats were still fine, but eating meat somehow was now taboo. Don’t ask me to explain the logic, I’m an omnivore, and adhere to the philosophy that if it can’t run away from the plate on its own it is fair game. Also, I was brought up in a plantation where my neighbors and family had farm animals. I remember as a little girl chasing down a chicken with my cousin to catch for that night’s dinner at my great aunt’s house. After we managed to corral the thing, my aunt wrung it’s neck, dressed it and we had fresh chicken that night for dinner. Oh please, don’t be horrified, the chicken wasn’t a pet, it didn’t have a name, and its whole reason for living in their yard was for the purpose of laying eggs and then serving as a dinner serving. Have you ever been around chickens? What other purpose do you think they should serve, they really aren’t the brightest of creatures, but they are tasty. I also love leather jackets, purses, shoes and sofas, so guess that I won’t be voted as a PETA representative any time soon, unless by PETA you mean “people eating tasty animals.”

My vegan, raw food friends are sweethearts and know that I try to come up with edible goodies for them, but they also accept that cheese and some form of “beast” will be served on our side of the table. We respect and accept each other’s food needs and a good time is always had by all. They also compromise when they come over and eat cooked food. I can deal and understand their vegan needs, but the “he” of this great couple doesn’t like raspberries, and that is the one thing I truly can’t comprehend on any level. I discovered this once when I made a raspberry sherbet for desert only to discover that he didn’t like raspberries. I must confess that that is just plain wrong, and even his wife agrees with me on that point. I mean, really, who doesn’t like raspberries?

WHERE'S THE BEEF?

 From vegetarians, raw food only and vegans we then go to the other extreme: the meat and potatoes only group. Talk about schizophrenia. From no meat and only vegetables we take the giant food leap into the world of the only edible vegetable is the potato and the only possible main dish is a large hunk of red meat, preferably grilled, and for variety hamburgers or a slab of ribs are an acceptable alternative. I have an uncle who fits into this slot. I love him dearly, but bless his soul, he has never eaten a salad in his life, in his words “that’s rabbit food.” No wonder my aunt hates to cook, she is bored silly after cooking the same few things over and over for over fifty years. At least I don’t have to think too hard what to cook for them when I have them over for dinner. It’s pretty much a no-brainer.

GOING NUTS ABOUT NUTS

I don’t remember hearing about food allergies in the before time. I’m sure they must have existed, but you never heard about them. Growing up I don’t remember any kid being allergic to peanuts or nuts or any other food. Maybe there were kids with food allergies and since no one knew about them they just ate the stuff and then died from it before they ever made it to school, and that’s why we never knew any kids with allergies (hope you, the reader understand that I am being facetious here). But now it seems like everyone has some sort of, either allergic reaction, or for health reasons have to avoid all sorts of foods. Let me name just a few allergies that affect my own acquaintances: raw tomatoes, peppers, sea food or any sort, cucumbers, peanuts, anything with seeds, carbonation, lactose intolerance, tannins, chocolate, cheese, still water (explain that one to me), and that’s just the ones that come immediately to mind.

TRICKS FOR TREATS

So, cooks beware, it is a food jungle out there with obstacles and snares which the modern day host must forge a tenuous path through. You almost need to keep an alphabetical log with the name of all your prospective guests with annotations of what foods they can or will eat next to each name. And oh, I didn’t even touch on the religious sins the unwary cook can condemn her guests to, like serving caffeinated coke, coffee or alcoholic beverages to a Mormon (I have a story about that one that I will write about at a later date), or a dairy product mixed in with meat to a Jewish guest. So, guess the only words of wisdom I can offer are: try your best to be as accommodating as you can, and hope your guests have the courtesy to be gracious of any and all unknowing faux pas you may unknowingly commit.

So, now that I have managed to scare you witless about all the dinner party pitfalls that can plague your plans, just take a giant plunge and forget everything I said and don’t worry and be happy… of course, you might want to pour yourself a large drink before your guests arrive. Happy entertaining.

Yurt Gotta Be Kidding

Recently, a couple, good friends of ours, emailed Chuck, my significant other, to tell us that they are thinking of going camping in a yurt. I gave Chuck a blank stare.

"What?” I inquired, “in the hell is a yurt?”

 Chuck gave me an impish smile and handed me a printed sheet of an article he found on the internet from the Washington Post entitled “In New Jersey, It Yurts So Good.” He had obviously anticipated my reaction and question. It turns out that a yurt is a tent with origins dating back to ye olde Genghis Khan times; originally a tent made out of leather with a wooden frame used by Mongolian nomadic tribes. Apparently some camp grounds have yurts available for campers to rent.

Ok. I will start out by making my position on camping clear. I have never understood why after working hard to own a home with modern conveniences like a state of the art kitchen with all the amenities, utensils, and expensive cookware; an expensive, but well worth the price, mattress that has the perfect blend of softness/support ratio; goose down pillows, indoor plumbing; equipping our home with air conditioning; and all the other modern conveniences that make life in this century much more appealing than in Genghis’ day, anyone would want to regress to sleeping on a cot, battling mosquitoes, and walking long distances to the nearest campground toilette in the middle of the night. Yes, I know that there are many millions of people that like the whole outdoor camping thing, but usually they are people who are much younger and have been doing that sort of insanity on a regular basis. I don’t know that our friends have seen a campground in at least the last two decades. I know that it is much warmer where they live than where we are here in Michigan, and I worry that perhaps the heat there is having an adverse effect on them.

I have been camping only a couple of times in my life, both experiences now more than two decades ago. I hated it both times. Once was in a tent, and the other time in a camper. Don’t really know which experience was worst. The tent experience had me sleeping on an air mattress. I am the original princess with the pea when it comes to sleeping accommodations. Air mattress or not, I felt every lump and bump on the ground under my mattress. The distant campground bathroom thing was not a good experience either. I spent the whole night walking back and forth the equivalent of a city block’s worth distance to the campground bathroom. It was a chilly and damp night, so by the time I would get back to the tent, the chill of the night air made my bladder decide it was time to make the return trip back to the toilette “facilities.” I got very little sleep and a lot of exercise that night. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning (no pun intended) I did manage to fall asleep only to be rudely awaked by some early morning jerk who decided to wake the whole campground up by playing “A Horse With No Name” on his guitar at 5 a.m. I was really tempted to go over and grab the guy’s guitar and smash it over his head, a la John Belushi in the movie “Animal House,” and probably would have, but for my husband restraining me from committing, what I would have considered justifiable campground battery with a musical weapon.

My second outdoorsy experience was in a camper. We went to the wilds of Canada with friends who owned a small – emphasis on small – camper. Four people trying to co-exist in a very confined space is a very bad idea. We all made the best of it, but it was not easy going. Remember what I said about being a princess with a pea kind of girl when it comes to sleeping arrangements. Well, I am also a bed hog. Trouble is, there was very little bed to hog. My husband and I had to try and sleep in a bed that was sized only slightly larger than a twin bed. One of us ended up holding on for dear life all night trying not to fall off the miniscule “bed” while squooshing the one nearest the wall in an effort not to fall off of the thing. We both woke up sore and cranky.

This trip took place in late spring. The Canadian wilderness is full of black flies that time of the year. The first night there we were unaware of the danger the plague of black flies presented, and my husband got so badly eaten alive that he had a fever that night from all the bites. The object of this trip was to fish a series of inland lakes for pike. It was pretty warm, but in spite of the temperature, we were forced to wear clothing to cover every part of our bodies since any exposed flesh was promptly attacked by the ferocious, invisible black flies. We also sprayed ourselves with that toxic fly and mosquito repellent stuff that probably deducts five years off of your life every time it comes in contact with your skin and travels into your body making its way into your bloodstream.

So, as you may have deduced by now, camping…. not exactly my cup of tea.

Back to what started this whole stream of thought, the yurt. Actually, the yurt tent does sound like a good alternative to buying a lot of expensive camping gear for what will probably be a one-time only camping outing, since one might expect that reason will probably be restored to my friends after one revisit to the wonders of the great, untamed camping, yurt, outdoorsy experience thing. Or, who knows, maybe they will have such a good time that frequent yurt stay-ins will become their holiday accommodation preference for many yurt times to come. I wish them lots of “yurt luck,” but would recommend that they keep their cell phones handy in case they decide to call the nearest town with permanent hotel accommodations and en suite indoor plumbing.

By Cynthia Nill